Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN THEY EXPECTED TO BREAK
Emergency lights glowed red along the baseboards.
Someone grabbed me from behind.
I drove my elbow backward.
Hard.
A man cursed.
Roman shouted from somewhere near the table.
“Cass!”
Another hand closed around my arm.
I twisted.
“Mrs. Bellandi, it’s Daniel.”
I stopped fighting.
Daniel Mercer pulled me behind one of the stone columns separating the dining room from the gallery.
“Stay low.”
Gunfire cracked outside.
Not inside.
Two shots.
Then three.
Guests screamed.
Security men were shouting into radios.
The estate’s backup generator should have engaged in eight seconds.
It didn’t.
That terrified me more than the darkness.
Because the generator controls were in a secured utility room.
Someone inside the estate had disabled them.
I had planned for Patrick.
I had not planned for a traitor in Roman’s house.
Daniel pressed something into my hand.
A phone.
Not mine.
“Emergency line. Your attorney is already connected.”
A woman’s voice whispered through the speaker.
“Cassandra?”
“Rachel.”
“Are you safe?”
“For the moment.”
“We received the transmission.”
Good.
Three nights earlier, attorney Rachel Bennett had sewn a recording device into the lining of my maternity dress.
Everything said at Thanksgiving had been transmitted to two encrypted servers.
Patrick’s admissions.
Alessia’s statements.
The trust documents.
Most importantly, Roman’s denial that he authorized the psychiatric report.
I had not worn a wire because I wanted revenge.
I wore it because pregnant wives were so easy to discredit.
Emotional.
Hormonal.
Confused.
Vindictive.
I intended to leave them nothing to reinterpret.
The lights returned.
Not the chandeliers.
Security floodlights.
Cold white beams filled the dining room.
Roman stood fifteen feet away with blood on his cuff.
My heart stopped.
Then I saw the source.
Not his.
Patrick Rourke lay on the carpet near the fireplace.
One of Roman’s guards had him pinned facedown.
Another man was bleeding from his forehead beside the French doors.
Alessia stood against the wall, pale and shaking.
Beatrice was beside her.
Roman found me.
Everything else disappeared from his face.
He crossed the room.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“The baby?”
“Moving.”
He touched my stomach before thinking.
I almost stopped him.
Then another contraction hit.
My knees weakened.
Roman caught me.
This time I let him.
Not forgiveness.
Biology.
Pain wrapped around my lower back and tightened so violently that I buried my face against his shoulder.
“Hospital,” he said.
“No argument now.”
My breath came out broken.
“Fine.”
His eyes widened slightly.
Apparently my agreement frightened him more than resistance.
He lifted me into his arms.
“I can walk.”
“You’re not walking.”
“Roman—”
“For once, Cassandra, hate me from the car.”
Despite everything, I almost laughed.
Almost.
Then I saw Alessia.
She still held my ring.
“Bring her.”
Roman stopped.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Cass—”
“She comes with us.”
Patrick, restrained across the room, began laughing.
“You still don’t understand what she is.”
I looked at him over Roman’s shoulder.
“I understand exactly what your daughter is.”
Patrick smiled.
“A replacement.”
Alessia flinched.
I shook my head.
“No. A witness.”
That ended his smile.
Twenty minutes later, Roman’s armored SUV tore through the snow toward St. Matthew’s Hospital.
I sat in the second row.
Roman beside me.
Alessia opposite us.
Two security vehicles followed.
A state police cruiser led.
My contractions were eight minutes apart.
Too early.
Thirty-two weeks was too early.
Roman watched the clock on his phone.
Every time pain came, his entire body stiffened.
“You can stop staring,” I said.
“I’m timing them.”
“I noticed.”
“Seven minutes, forty-two seconds.”
Alessia looked out the window.
I studied her.
“Why did you come tonight?”
Her head turned.
“You invited me.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
She swallowed.
“My father told me not to.”
Roman frowned.
“What?”
“He called after you did.”
“What did he say?”
Alessia looked at him.
“He said Cassandra had found something and that I needed to stay away.”
Roman’s expression hardened.
“And you came anyway.”
She nodded.
“Why?”
Her eyes moved to me.
“Because three days ago I found something too.”
I forgot my pain for a second.
“What?”
“My father keeps a private safe in his study.”
Patrick Rourke did not trust banks with his most dangerous papers.
I knew that from Daniel.
“He changed the code,” Alessia continued. “But he used my mother’s death date.”
Her voice softened.
“She died when I was seventeen. He always uses dates he thinks make him look sentimental.”
“What was inside?” I asked.
“A contract.”
Roman leaned forward.
“What contract?”
Alessia hesitated.
“My marriage agreement.”
Silence.
Roman’s face changed.
“Your what?”
“To Thomas Calder’s son.”
I stared at her.
Alessia gave a humorless laugh.
“Surprise. Apparently I’m not the mistress who becomes Mrs. Bellandi.”
Roman looked genuinely confused.
I believed that too.
“My father never intended me to marry you,” she said. “He intended the affair to destroy Cassandra’s leverage.”
I felt cold.
“Explain.”
“He needed Roman compromised before the succession vote.”
Roman looked at me.
I understood first.
The Bellandi family’s legitimate companies were held beneath a complex voting structure.
Roman controlled forty-one percent.
Beatrice controlled sixteen.
Several allied families held the rest.
But the trust drafted for my daughter would eventually consolidate another twelve percent under Roman’s household.
Enough to make him untouchable.
Unless his wife challenged the trust.
Unless that wife could be declared unstable.
Unless Roman’s affair destroyed his credibility during the fight.
Patrick had positioned everyone against everyone.
Roman against me.
Me against Alessia.
Alessia against Roman.
Beatrice against anyone threatening the family.
A table full of people fighting over one unborn child while Patrick quietly acquired their votes.
I whispered, “He never wanted peace.”
Alessia shook her head.
“He wanted control.”
Roman leaned back.
For the first time in the nine years I had known him, he looked blindsided.
Not angry.
Not calculating.
Betrayed.
I should have enjoyed it.
Instead I felt exhausted.
Because he had helped Patrick without even knowing it.
Every lie Roman told me made Patrick’s job easier.
Every secret hotel room.
Every private phone call.
Every time Roman told himself his affair was separate from business.
He had opened our home and invited the knife inside.
Another contraction began.
I shut my eyes.
Roman took my hand.
I squeezed hard enough to hurt him.
He did not complain.
At the hospital, doctors rushed me to maternity triage.
Medication slowed the contractions.
Our daughter’s heartbeat remained strong.
No labor.
Not yet.
An hour later, I lay beneath a thin hospital blanket while snow pressed against the dark windows.
Roman sat beside the bed.
Alessia was speaking with investigators outside.
We were alone for the first time since Thanksgiving began.
Roman looked older.
“You knew about me and Alessia before the hotel.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Four months.”
His head dropped.
Four months of coming home to me.
Four months of sleeping beside me.
Four months of watching me prepare a nursery while he carried another woman’s perfume through our front door.
“Why didn’t you confront me?”
“Because once I found the trust documents, your affair became secondary.”
He looked up.
The pain on his face almost made me cruel.
Almost.
“Do you know how humiliating that is?” I asked. “Your betrayal was so ordinary compared with what your family was planning that I had to put it on a waiting list.”
“Cass—”
“No.”
He stopped.
“You don’t get to explain yet.”
He nodded slowly.
I had never seen Roman Bellandi accept silence as a punishment.
Tonight he did.
“I need one answer,” I said.
“Anything.”
“Did you agree to remove me as Isabel’s trustee?”
His eyes held mine.
“Yes.”
The truth cut deeper than I expected.
“Why?”
“Because I was told you would take her and leave.”
“So you tried to make sure I couldn’t.”
“I told myself I was protecting my daughter.”
“Our daughter.”
“Our daughter.”
I looked toward the fetal monitor.
“That is how people like Patrick win, Roman. He gives everyone a fear and lets them turn it into cruelty.”
Roman said nothing.
A knock came.
Daniel entered.
His expression was grim.
“We searched Patrick’s phone.”
I pushed myself higher.
“And?”
“There’s a message chain with someone inside the Bellandi household.”
Roman stood.
“Who?”
Daniel placed a photograph on the bed.
I recognized the face.
And for the first time that night, fear replaced anger.
Because the person who had been feeding Patrick information was not a guard.
Not a lawyer.
Not a servant.
It was Beatrice Bellandi.
Roman’s mother.
May you like
And according to the last message she had sent Patrick, my Thanksgiving dinner was never supposed to end with a signature.
It was supposed to end with me losing my baby.
